So, following the Jessie release, and after a quick approval by the release team for the 4.12 transition, we've uploaded Xfce 4.12 to sid and have asked the RT to schedule the relevant binNMUs for the libxfce4util and xfce4-panel reverse dependencies.

It went apparently well (besides some hickups here and there, lilke some lag on sparc, and some build-failulres on hurd). So Xfce 4.12 is now in sid, and should migrate to Stretch in the following weeks, provided nothing release critical is found.

So, following the previous post, I've indeed updated the way I'm making my grsec kernels.

I wanted to upgrade my server to Jessie, and didn't want to keep the 3.2 kernel indefinitely, so I had to update to at least 3.14, and find something to make my life (and maybe some others) easier.

In the end, like planned, I've switched to the make deb-pkg way, using some scripts here and there to simplify stuff.

The scripts and configs can be found in my debian-grsec-config repository. The repository layout is pretty much self-explaining:

The bin/ folder contains two scripts:

• get-grsec.sh, which will pick the latest grsec patch (for each branch) and applies it to the correct Linux branch. This script should be run from a git clone of the linux-stable git repository;
• kconfig.py is taken from the src:linux Debian package, and can be used to merge multiple KConfig files

The configs/ folder contains the various configuration bits:

• config-* files are the Debian configuration files, taken from the linux-image binary packages (for amd64 and i386);
• grsec* are the grsecurity specifics bits (obviously);
• hardening* contain non-grsec stuff still useful for hardened kernels, for example KASLR (cargo-culting nonwidthstanding) or strong SSP (available since I'm building the kernels on a sid box, YMMV).

I'm currently building amd64 kernels for Jessie and i386 kernels will follow soon, using config-3.14 + hardening + grsec. I'm hosting them on my apt repository. You're obviously free to use them, but considering how easy it is to rebuild a kernel, you might want to use a personal configuration (instead of mine) and rebuild the kernel yourself, so you don't have to trust my binary packages.

Here's a very quick howto (adapt it to your needs):

mkdir linux-grsec && cd linux-grsec
git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git
git clone git://anonscm.debian.org/users/corsac/grsec/debian-grsec-config.git
mkdir build
cd linux-stable
../debian-grsec-config/bin/get-grsec.sh stable2 # for 3.14 branch
../debian-grsec-config/bin/kconfig.py ../build/.config ../debian-grsec-config/configs/config-3.14-2-amd64 ../debian-grsec-config/configs/hardening ../debian-grsec-config/configs/grsec
make KBUILD_OUTPUT=../build -j4 oldconfig
make KBUILD_OUTPUT=../build -j4 deb-pkg

Then you can use the generated Debian binary packages. If you use the Debian config, it'll need a lot of disk space for compilation and generate a huge linux-image debug package, so you might want to unset CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO locally if you're not interested. Right now only the deb files are generated but I've submitted a patch to have a .changes file which can be then used to manipulate them more easily (for example for uploading them a local Debian repository).

Note that, obviously, this is not targeted for inclusion to the official Debian archive. This is still not possible for various reasons explained here and there, and I still don't have a solution for that.

I hope this (either the scripts and config or the generated binary packages) can be useful. Don't hesitate to drop me a mail if needed.